


Snakes On the Main

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Animals, Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Gen, Prompt Fic, The shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Co-starring 400 cockatoos and parrots, 12 snakes, some monkeys, a gorilla, an orangutan and two crocodiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snakes On the Main

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2014 July Watson’s Woes Prompt #17, brought to you by the BBC: **Truth is stranger than** : Use [one of these articles](http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=victorian+strangeness) as your inspiration for today's work. (Victorian strangeness). **I chose[this story](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27344976) as my inspiration.**
> 
>  **Further Warning:** 89% chance of crack dead ahead. Animals killing each other. Cruelty to a couple of bastard monkeys.

“My dear Watson, I am sure your sentiments match mine on this occasion,” shouted Sherlock Holmes, hoisting himself a little higher up the mainmast to avoid the snapping jaws of the crocodile beneath him. “I am heartily sick of these unspeakable reptiles on this accursed ship!”

As I was on the deck trying to negotiate not just the crocodile but constrictors and pythons like living, deadly cables slithering around me, I could not but agree.

The first clue that our work aboard the steamship _Friesland_ would be out of the ordinary came when we discovered what the cargo was – a hold full of crated birds and beasts bound for a Dutch museum. The next was when the storm we drove into at full steam proved more than a match for the flimsy wooden crates built to hold the snakes, crocodiles, monkeys and apes – the gorilla 400 lbs if he was a pennyweight – and the creatures were freed to wreak havoc aboard the ship in the teeth of the gale.

Most of the parrots uneaten by the ship’s rats or swallowed by the snakes flew off, screeching. The snakes – long and deadly, slithering across the deck like thick scaly cables – in turn took care of the rats, a small mercy.

To me, however, the worst of the lot was not the crocodiles trying to climb up or bite down the mainmast to devour my friend; not the monkeys in the rigging screeching and flinging their foul missiles at everyone aboard; not the screaming parrots perched everywhere; not the snakes trying to turn crewmembers into living images of Laocoön; not even the gorilla roaring and swinging an iron bar at any sailor who tried to recapture him. It was the orang-utan, a great fat brute, flopped across the bow-sprit and snoring like a corpulent member of the Red-Headed League on a seaside holiday, that set my teeth on edge as the worst member of the entire mutinous menagerie. Vicious and violent beasts I could handle; the orang’s nonchalance felt like an insult.

I expended every bullet in my revolver taking down three snakes and one of the crocodiles. Now armed with an axe I’d found strapped to the hull, I tried to get behind the other croc and deal a blow to the brain hiding somewhere in that armoured skull without myself falling prey to that open mouth, or to the slithering constrictors (thank God the museum had not requested poisonous snakes), whilst the monkeys screamed overhead, the sailors shouted, the wind and rain lashed the vessel, the gorilla roared … and the orang-utan turned over on the bowsprit, scratching his armpit.

When one of the hideous little simian’s improvised weapons splattered on my head and shirt, my rage and temper got the best of me. I threw back my soiled head and roared into the rain at the culprits like a maddened lion – and saw that two of them were perched on the same piece of rigging, swinging right over the snapping jaws of the beast trying to seize Holmes’ foot. Better them than my friend – I flung the axe, which buried itself in the mast just over Holmes’ head and chopped the rigging line in two, sending the creatures shrieking into the croc’s maw. I am sorry to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle as the scaly monster dropped down from its assault on the mainmast, bolting down both of my assailants at once. Holmes was safe, for now.

“Watson!” my friend cried.

Attack behind me, get out of the way – I lunged forward as pain glanced across the back of my head. I saw stars, stumbled. A powerful arm caught me before I fell among the boas; a huge arm, covered with coarse black hair.

Some fellow-feeling must exist among the primate species. This is the only reason I can account for the gorilla abandoning his attack on the sailors and taking a swing at me with the iron bar after I’d sent two of his smaller long-tailed kin to their deaths.  Holmes’ warning cry kept me from getting my brains dashed out. But now I was held in the unbreakable grip of a furious jungle king.

Perhaps some instinct told the gorilla to seek the safety of treetops – and the nearest thing to that on the _Friesland_ were the masts which normally bore the sails that helped the steamer along. Since this hairy old cousin had a grudge with me, he carried me along with him. In the time it takes to read this, I was atop the middle-mast, dazed and staring at the deck far below, and locked in an ape’s arms that were more powerful than a weight-lifter’s legs.

Parrots screeched and flew around us; three or four of them darted at my captor, who roared and swung at them with his free arm, and succeeded in knocking one of the birds to the sea below. I mournfully watched the beautiful blue parrot plummet, and knew I would soon join it in the choir invisible; even now the enraged gorilla tightened his grip on my middle, perhaps planning to crush my ribs before flinging me below.

Which was when the whirling axe flew up from the deck and the back of the axe-head struck the gorilla square between the eyes.

The stunned beast loosened its grip on me, and I clung to the mast as it swayed and fell to the deck. _Bloody well done, Holmes._

Two sailor-men swarmed up my mast to help me down, as I was in no condition to do the deed myself, and when we reached the deck Holmes was waiting with a smile. He could have been at a concert enjoying the music instead of having just thrown a hatchet like an Iroquois warrior. The other tars had dispatched the troublesome crocodile and were now corralling the snakes.

I touched the deck, and stumbled once again. Again, a strong arm – a wiry one – caught me.

***

A warm blanket and a cup of tea belowdecks did much to restore me, though I repeatedly probed at my bloodied head and winced at the goose-egg the hairy brute had given me. (Amazingly, the gorilla was still alive after his fall, still lying where he’d fallen and now snoring in tandem with the insufferable orang-utan. They, along with three monkeys and a few parrots, were the sole survivors of the murderous menagerie.)

“Well done, Watson,” Holmes said.

I laughed, painfully. “That last bit wasn’t so well done, I’m afraid.”

“My dear fellow, that was the best part!” With a gleeful chuckle, Sherlock Holmes produced a long black leather-bound ledger. “Whilst you and the gorilla provided a spectacle that drew all the passengers on deck – including Herbert Carstairs – I took the opportunity to rifle his stateroom. I’ve found the second book that proves he’s been siphoning funds from his employers!”

I stared stupidly at the book. Oh. Oh, yes. The Carstairs embezzlement. That _had_ been the reason we’d been aboard in the first place, wasn’t it?

“We should be pulling into the dock at Rotterdam soon,” Holmes was saying. “And then it’s off to a hotel, a hot bath, and dry clothes.”

All of it sounded heavenly. But I winced again. “A hot bath, yes. Dinner, absolutely. But I don’t think I should sleep tonight, old man, not with this knot on my head.”

Holmes nodded in sympathy. “I’ll read you something to divert your mind and keep you awake.”

“Thank you.” I met his eyes. “Just – anything but ‘Doctor Doolittle’.”


End file.
